


An Excellent Start

by Like_a_Hurricane



Series: Pernicious Prompting [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Don't worry it's almost comics-canon, I seem to have brought in a dragon don't ask, M/M, Shamelessly ignoring the movies' timelines, Steampunk, not really - Freeform, steampunk!AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Like_a_Hurricane/pseuds/Like_a_Hurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthony Stark is a slightly misanthropic inventor living outside London while his god-father Obadiah Stane runs his father’s manufacturing empire. Things begin to go downhill and sideways when he gets kidnapped in Eastern Europe and the Ten Rings deliver an oddly familiar face into the cave he shares with Dr. Yinsen.</p><p>Steampunk AU Ahoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Excellent Start

**Author's Note:**

> I warn you that I do a lot of random AU-history name-dropping: Charles Babbage with a successful Difference Engine (early computer) along with the SUPER AWESOME real historical figure of Ada Lovelace (effectively the world's first computer programmer I love her), Nikola Tesla with some actual recognition during his lifetime and badass inventions that work like mad science should... that sort of thing.
> 
> I'm a nerd. Forgive me.
> 
> Also: this sort of exploded out of a combined urge to fill the steampunk prompt, and a desire to offer [Nautilusl2](http://nautilusl2.deviantart.com/) a belated birthday gift. And then the wordcount skyrocketed, so hey.

Anthony Stark first met first met the uniquely strange creature called Loki at one of his father’s massive exhibitions. At age fifteen, Tony was already haunting respected and respectable universities, making their professors feel inadequate as he scrawled equations and schematics across their chalkboards. He was astute, quick-witted, and usually enjoyed all the attention he could get from standing out in a crowd––unless it was his father’s crowd. Then the attention would never truly be his, and that burned more than he wished to admit.

So he had dressed down a bit, and spoken to no one, as he wandered about the exhibition’s fairground-atmosphere watching the people, as he was wont to do at times like this. When not busy putting on a performance, he did love to dissect everyone else’s. Women in their heavy skirts tittered over this or that gadget, led by kin or husbands in top-hats and tails. Tony side-stepped the occasional horse-drawn carriage now and again.

Not only Stark technologies were on display. Intriguing and only mildly impractical battle machines from Latveria made their appearance. There were innovative new means of wireless energy transfer, directed-energy weaponry, and such systems by Nikola Tesla. There was characteristic bickering of a public nature between Charles Babbage and anyone who questioned how frequently his Difference Engines seemed to break down, while the lovely Miss Lovelace was off talking to more rational persons about the new mathematical language the engine was helping to pioneer. For several minutes Tony lingered near that lively discussion, watching her with the air of a lovesick puppy, unable to find words while she was so beautifully outwitting half of the people around her with every sentence. He was fifteen, and around her he felt even younger, what scant maturity he might have otherwise feigned melting away quite shamefully, replaced with such eloquent thoughts as, _I love the way you talk brilliant._

After making a full circuit of some smaller and more obscure exhibits, some involving spiders and lizards as models to improve medicine for humans, which baffled him, Tony made his way toward his father’s favorite project, though most people had so little imagination that they hardly knew what to make of it: Howard Stark’s Astonishing Arc-Reactor. It even got its own tent.

Most people stood back, listened to or read a bit about what it did, and wandered away, whispering and tending to appear a bit baffled. There were a few exceptions, mostly older engineers talking amongst themselves, or trying in vain to explain it to men who wanted to make vast sums of money off of it the way that people always wanted to do with Howard Stark’s inventions. Feats of engineering based on aetheric mechanics,  of a sort that couldn’t be put on a plane, airship or other such machine tended to be, in Obadiah’s words, a “tough sell.”

There was someone who stood out, almost suspiciously: a tall, narrow-built man with an actor’s expressiveness and slightly-too-long black hair styled smoothly back from his pale face. He wore an exquisitely tailored frock coat of fine black cloth with understated brass buttons, a dark green waistcoat, and a simple black tie. He was not American, Tony could tell, even from a distance. The man looked like an actor or poet from Europe or Great Britain, at first glance, but then Tony saw the meticulous way the man strode a full circuit around the arc reactor: taking in details with a keen and practical eye, not quite impressed, but thoughtful, with an occasional hint of mischief to his expression.

Out of curiosity, Tony approached. “See something you like, sir?”

The taller man glanced down at him briefly, then back to the arc reactor for just a moment before settling more decidedly on Tony’s face. “It’s an excellent start,” he said.

Tony blinked at that, starting to smile despite himself. “You know... that’s what I thought. It’s still not very efficient, when it comes right down to it. He wants to use it for a wide number of things, but given its size, not even an oversized zeppelin could carry it, let alone any of our apergy-based ships, and so almost no one is interested. At most, one of them might power Coney Island. Until it’s smaller, more efficient, or both, it won’t go anywhere; however, I’m working on that.”

The stranger’s eyes brightened still further, smiling in return. He proffered a hand. “Loki Odinsson,” he offered.

After only a moment’s hesitation, Tony accepted the handshake and said, “I’m Anthony Stark.” He braced for the inevitable _Oh really?_ reaction, and the inevitable awkward questions.

Loki nodded. “I know.” He tilted his head just a little. “You’re more interesting than I anticipated, Mr. Stark.”

Tony wasn’t at all sure how to respond to that. “Where are you from, if I may ask?”

“Not here,” the stranger said easily, folding his hands over the top of his elegant black walking stick. He wore no rings, but a small emerald glinted in his tie-pin, the exact same color as his eyes.

“I can tell that much. I _am_ a genius.”

Loki nodded a little. “I do believe you are.”

Then Obadiah arrived, and called after him.

Tony turned to look and wave him off, but when he glanced back, the stranger had vanished entirely, without so much as a sound. “Oh,” he said, a bit disappointed. “Very strange.” He then joined Obadiah.

 

~~

 

Howard Stark was American, originally, but his talent for engineering brilliance drew him all over Europe. He fell in love with all sorts of other countries, and they fell head over heels for him. Kings called him brother, and asked his advice. He got into historically loud and abrasive arguments with Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He built factories, all over, and they made marvels. Several of them, back home in the United States, built weapons. Love others he may, he maintained that love and trust were very different things.

All over the world, he touched and encouraged and inspired.

Back home in New York, his son, child prodigy and fiercely intelligent creature that he was, built wonders of his own. Tony travelled with his father on occasion, in the summers, but otherwise spent his time offending people who presumed they had the intellects to “reign in his intellectual progress.” It had started in public schools, then private ones. The English ones had managed to get him banned from all primary schools nationwide after he was kicked out of his third.

Then there were the tutors. He liked the language ones, as they tended to be rather more of a challenge (they lasted a couple of months, rather than merely a few days) but most others he listened to for the first two days with rapt attention: the perfect pupil, methodically wringing from them all of the information he might actually consider useful or interesting. Then he proceeded to ignore or outright insult them once he had gotten all of the information from them that he felt in need of. If they persisted in trying to pretend they had any authority over him after day three, things tended to go downhill swiftly from there.

When his mother died, Anthony and his father began to regard each other less with the awkwardness of two people who should be close but scarcely remembered to write to each other marred by intermittent bouts of shared sense of humor, and more into outright resentment. Howard wished to have more of a part in his son’s life, as he knew his wife had; Anthony was insulted by the idea that after so many years of being mostly-ignored, his father would presume himself to have the rights to his attention, affection, and obedience.

As a result, by the time Tony reached age seventeen, he and his father only spoke to one another in clipped, impersonal terms at public events like exhibitions or holiday balls. When his father died one year later, Tony handed over the manufacturing empire to Obadiah for a mostly-reasonable price, and settled in with his fortune and his eccentricities in a large house just outside of London, because New York made him think too much of his father. He still held all of his father’s patents, and provided his father’s manufacturing empire with new products now and again when Obadiah liked one of his new projects enough for him to needle Tony into making it mass-produceable. As a result, he was fabulously wealthy by any sort of standard.

All things considered, he was an inventor, at heart. He was not like his father: he did not want to tell everyone in the world how they should build the future into some particular vision. Tony just wanted to build things that no one ever dreamed possible. He shared correspondence with Nikola Tesla over the years and came up with energy-focusing repulsors that were capable of giving off a one-way push of reactionless force with no inconvenient chemical residue or bursts of flame. He didn’t think about why he didn’t show them to Obadiah, though he shared so many other things: dangerous things. It never occurred to him to believe his god-father might be hanging such items like a carrot in front of inherently untrustworthy people, organizations, and political parties. It especially never occurred to him that Obadiah might offering them to _opposing sides_ of various conflicts.

At least, not until Tony found himself kidnapped by an arm of the Ten Rings while on his way to an exhibition in Austria that Obadiah had insisted Tony had to attend; and it still took a long while for suspicion to set in, even then.

He hadn’t gone down easy, though. In retrospect, it was very lucky they had taken that eventuality into account, and thought to keep Dr. Yinsen alive for a few weeks longer, just in case things went awry.

Thus, Tony woke to excruciating pain, the lingering smell of laudanum, and an assortment of steel and bakelite-insulated wires sticking out of a shallow hole in his chest. It was deeply disconcerting, to say the least.

“What have you done to me?” he rasped.

“You are lucky to have a surgeon who also understands how your inventions work, Mr. Stark,” the doctor said. He looked tired and broken, but steely and determined, his dark eyes very bright. “The electromagnet in your chest is keeping very small pieces of metal shrapnel out of your heart. It’s powered by the core of one of your more long-range weapons.”

Tony sat up just a few inches, enough to get a glimpse of the small cavorite engine, feeling his skin prickle with horror. “That’s a prototype. I made it myself. Shouldn’t be out here.” He slumped back with a groan. “What is it doing here?”

“They are collectors of your work.” Yinsen looked over the tops of his spectacles at the wounded engineer. “Would you like to see your legacy, Mr. Stark? I don’t doubt they will show it to you.”

And they did, and he was horrified. It took a bit of torture and few motivational yet depressing and existential conversations with the doctor who had saved his life to get Tony back into gear, after that.

Then some while later, they brought someone else down into their little cement-walled abode, where Tony sat pulling apart his own weapons and making something with them that Dr. Yinsen was still unclear on. Two very large and burly men dragged an obviously unconscious man down the stairs. Tony, very nearly done with the final touches on his device, glanced up curiously. Yinsen immediately rose to his feet.

Along with the two strong backs and weak minds, came the head of their little operation: fingers of one hand fondling the frankly overlarge and ostentatious ring he wore upon the other. He spoke with another, a Chinese man who was more tastefully dressed and more polite about his shrewdness. They spoke fluently in a dialect Tony couldn’t even begin to recognize, apparently arguing a bit about the unconscious man. At a guess, the slightly overweight white man wearing the ring wanted to just kill him, but the Chinese man wanted him kept.

Eventually, the ring-holder gave in and called Yinsen over. “Try to make sure this bastard isn’t quite dead yet.” Then the crowd left, and only the doctor, the engineer, and the unconscious stranger remained. “But don’t try _too_ hard. He scared off the rest of the fucking town with his stunts out there.”

Yinsen knelt down and turned the man gently over. He hissed sympathetically. “Are you nearly done over there, Tony? I will need your help to lift him into a cot.”

“Just a second.” He connected the necessary copper lines and cables to the improvised power-cells he had arranged in the hours previous. Then he activated them, bringing it all to life with groaning hiss of steam and sudden smell of ozone: raw power pulled from lifeless things. Their lights overhead flickered and went down for several long moments, and there in the dark appeared a circle of light ten times brighter than they had been. Pushing down first one lever, then another, Tony eased up, and finally the other lights returned. He was breathing hard. “Holy shit it worked.”

A low groan, from the man on the floor.

Reluctantly, Tony stood, carrying his cavorite engine with him in one arm. He strolled over, set it on the unconscious man’s chest. “Ready?”

“Yes,” Yinsen confirmed.

They lifted.

Tony swore in a decidedly ungentlemanly manner. “For such a thin-looking man, he’s a bit heavy, don’t you think?”

“Agreed,” Yinsen said. Still, they managed to get him onto a cot.

Tony looked at his hands with wide eyes. “Oh, shit. Uh... isn’t this a lot of blood? Just by most standards of one man wearing quite so much of it.”

“From the looks of him, I don’t think its his. He’s pale, but not transparent, and his pulse is still quite strong,” Yinsen muttered. “Help me get this ridiculous bag off of his head and his coats off.”

They started with the coats, because they were trickier, and based on the bloodshed neither man was wholly sure they wanted to see how badly beaten the man looked. Tony found a few suspiciously bloody tears in the man’s frock coat. “I think a lot of the blood _is_ his, doc.”

Yinsen made a noncommittal noise, pressing at the places in the man’s shirt with corresponding holes. “The skin under these tears in the cloth is not broken: badly bruised, but not bleeding.”

“That makes no sense,” Tony muttered, and tugged the bag away. Then he stared. And stared. “That... I...”

“You know him?” Yinsen asked.

Tony shook his head. “Not really, but we’ve met,” he said. “His name is Loki Odinsson.” He didn’t bother to mention how unusual it was for him to remember the face of such a passing acquaintance, let alone a name too. He glanced back over toward his work table. “Is he stable, do you think?”

After a few minutes of further scrutiny, Yinsen nodded. “He will be fine enough, I think. Why do you ask?”

“I need you to help me replace this-” He tapped the cavorite engine connectors sticking out of his chest. “-with _that_.” Tony pointed back at the blue glow on his work table.

Yinsen stared for a long moment. “You’re sure it will have enough power?”

“Oh yeah.” Tony started to grin. “Plenty.”

 

~~

 

Not too long after Tony’s procedure, the cave’s newest guest made a low, pained sound and sat up sharply, eyes darting around the room madly. Yinsen had fallen asleep, and for such a nervous man and a doctor, he sometimes slept like a dead thing. This was one such occasion.

“Fancy seeing you again,” Tony called, and saw the man’s head snap over to look toward him where he worked. “How did _you_ piss off the Ten Rings? They did a number on you, and wanted to do worse, but seems they decided to lock you in with us.” He glanced up with a questioning look, still working on dissembling a few large bronze structures. If he’d had a bit more pride and a little less pracitcality, he might have been irritated that the remains of one of Otto von Doom’s bronze-and-steel clockwork war machines had wound up in the scrap pile of Stark weapons he’d been given to work with, but it suited his plans just fine for now.

Slowly, Loki eased up from the cot and strode over. As soon as his dark green eyes caught the light, recognition set in, and he smiled, thin and weary, but wicked nevertheless. “Ah. Mr. Stark. You’re a capture of theirs, too, then?”

Tony nodded, looking the man up and down. “You look pretty spry given how many holes I think they put in you.”

Loki tried to shrug it off, then caught sight of the blue glow coming through the rough-spun shirt Tony wore, and leaned over the table for a closer look, discerning the device’s shape and how it seemed to be mounted. “I think it fair to say they put a few in you as well.” He sounded curious, and slightly regretful. “You will live, yes?”

“So far as we can tell. Unless some sort of infections set in. We seem to be in a prison basement or something, so given the cool and the damp...”

For a moment, Loki frowned, then looked down at his own hands, flexing his fingers as though making sure they still worked properly. “I can aid with that, but I will need some days to recover.” His smile returned as a parody of itself: devoid of humor and full of self-deprecation. “I underestimated a dragon.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “The Chinese man?”

Loki looked up at him, blinked. “It was not metaphor.”

“... Pardon?” Tony asked.

“It’s a very long story, and I doubt you will believe a word of it. You’re by far the least superstitious mortal I’ve met, I think. At least, that’s my general impression, from what I’ve heard about you over the years, and the look on your face presently.”

Tony blinked. “Mortal,” he said. “This, I take it, is to imply that you’re not mortal?”

“Well, I’m capable of dying, but it’s _very_ difficult to achieve.” He tugged at his once-white shirt, and examined a few of the punctures in the fabric. Then he met Tony’s gaze pointedly.

The engineer considered. “You’re not human, then?”

“Not quite. You do catch on fast. It’s rather refreshing. Unfortunately, I am known to the Ten Rings, and not as any of the guises I don in public around mortals. They know who I am and of what I am capable.” He looked around the workshop, and spotted Tony’s stack of papers with designs drawn on them. “They have you designing weapons?”

“Yes, they do,” Tony said.

Loki looked at him sidelong. “Did they promise you freedom in return?”

“Oh, absolutely,” the engineer said, his tone light and airy. He shot the tall, possibly-not-human creature a smile.

Slowly, Loki began to return it. “Oh. Mischief. Do please allow me to help, Mr. Stark. I assure you that I truly excel at mischief.”

“Enough to help me out of here?”

Loki nodded. “Quite.”

Tony considered him for a long few moments. “And once we’re out?”

At that, Loki tilted his head to one side. “Does it matter?”

It had been just over thirteen years, and Tony still remembered this one from their first meeting at the exhibition. That was unusual, by a long shot. Now, knowing himself and having explored a large number of his... _personal proclivities_ over the years, Tony had a bit of an idea why. Just as in that first brief conversation, he already had a sense that Loki was _keeping up_ with him: not just his scientific mind (he got that brotherly understanding from Sir Richard Reed, and some of his mentors like Tesla) but also his sense of humor, his understanding of people and how the world really worked. _Who looks at something like Howard Stark’s unheard-of advances in energy production made manifest in the form of that massive arc reactor and responds with ‘It’s a start’?_ The mad engineer began to grin. _My sort of person._ “You’re more interesting than I anticipated, Mr. Odinsson.”

Loki appeared a little surprised, and more than a little intrigued. “Am I?”

“Yes.” Tony leaned a back a bit in the rough wooden chair. “And I’ve got an opinion question for you.”

“Yes?”

He pulled down his shirt a bit further and exposed the arc reactor entirely.

Loki stepped around the table to examine it more closely, his expression a polite sort of mask usually worn by nurses or doctors to keep their patients at ease. He lightly touched the cover atop the little circle of light and sucked in a low breath.

Tony’s eyebrows raised. “You’re alright?”

“Yes.” He met Tony’s gaze. “You’ve drastically improved the design.”

Tony smiled. “More than just a start, maybe?”

Loki stared at him for a long, considering moment, the look in his eyes making him suddenly look much, much older than his face might indicate. “Yes,” Loki said softly. “A fair amount more than that.” He looked around the cell with an odd look in his eyes and began to smile very strangely. “Light out of dark. Something out of nothing.” He pulled his fingertips away from the arc reactor, and the glow lingered a little. Loki closed his eyes for a moment to focus on it, and the glow increased just slightly.

Tony’s eyes widened. “How are you doing that?”

“I borrowed a bit of power. Not much.” Loki began to smile very darkly, then it abruptly faded, and he rubbed his hands together, the light appearing to go out. “I suppose I should return it.” He placed a hand over Tony’s chest, across the skin above the arc reactor.

The engineer’s eyes widened as he felt a chilling, electric-shock run through him. He hissed as the feeling lingered behind the arc reactor: stinging, beginning to burn. “What are you doing?”

“You hadn’t noticed, but you were running a fever,” Loki said, his eyes still shut. “Infection was already setting in. You’re vastly ahead of the rest of your species, but the sanitation around here could still be drastically improved.” He hesitated, then rested his other hand back over the arc reactor. “Just a moment.”

Tony could hardly breathe past the discomfort, but didn’t struggle nevertheless. He could feel heat and pain and tenderness, then abruptly he couldn’t. His eyes fell open and he stared at Loki.

Loki stared back, his eyes a bit blue-lit for a moment. Then he removed his hands and almost collapsed backwards to sit on the work table, that light going green, then fading out. He shook his head as though to clear it. “Energy conversion is rather taxing, as compared to using my own power. That was... a bit more tiring than I honestly expected.”

“You’ve got circles under your eyes. It looks like I punched you,” Tony said. “What... why did you do that?”

For a moment, Loki appeared to be trying to work that out as well. He then offered a slightly milder version of that self-deprecating smile from earlier. “I had already decided I liked you after we first met. Seeing you now, in here...” He gestured vaguely at the room around them. “I’m a shaper of things, Mr. Stark. I pull power from seemingly lifeless things, and build it into shapes and structures to achieve my ends. My return to earth after so long without paying a visit was the result of an arduous journey. I escaped tormentors who would have turned me against my own kingdom.” His brow furrowed. “Kingdoms? Either of them. Both of them, most likely.” He made a face, then continued. “You look the way that I did, Stark, when I was finding a way to trick and claw my way out of the dark.”

Tony blinked, absorbing the full implications of Loki’s words, bit by bit. _Not from earth. Older than he looks. In possession of powers other than healing, I presume: of what sort, I wonder?_ Tony tapped at his arc reactor, as was quickly becoming a habit, then paused, realizing that the itching tenderness that used to come with each tap was gone. “Where are you really from?”

Loki snorted. “Interesting question. I was raised in Asgard. I was not born there; although I was unaware of that for a long, long time. That in and of itself is a story for another time, preferably after I’ve consumed enough alcohol to pickle a small rhinoceros. I think you’ve already gathered, but the implication is that I am not from this world. I’m from a different one. We’ve inspired religions around here, in fact. They called me the god of lies and mischief, throughout the lands which now comprise Scandinavia.”

“... I think I mostly believe you,” Tony muttered. “And also, that title suits you.”

“I thought so,” Loki mused. “Others included Lie-smith and Silver-tongue.”

At that, the rhythmic tap of Tony’s fingertips on the arc reactor stuttered just for a moment as a few interesting images crossed his mind. He cleared his throat softly. “Interesting.”

Slowly, Loki began to smirk: slow and outright sultry this time as it clicked. “Perhaps, after our escape, I’ll show you just _how_ interesting.”

Tony couldn’t help but grin at that. “Oh, excellent.” He leaned forward a bit in his seat. “Now... you mentioned you’ll need a day or two to recover. After that, I take it you do things other than heal.”

Loki nodded.

“Let’s talk exit strategy. How good are you at metal-working?”

“I’m no citizen of Svartálfaheimr, but I’m not incompetent.”

“I will pretend I understood that, and proceed as though I did. Now...” He picked up the stack of papers he’d been working on. “Let’s start with this. It’ll keep us occupied at least another day and a half, I think. More likely two. Once it’s done, we’ll need to work fast, of course.” He flattened out the very thin paper, revealing his designs for what they truly were.”

Loki made a thoughtful sound. “Very interesting, even as improvised as it is.”

“I have ideas for a better design, of course, but given what I’ve got to work with, here?” He shrugged. “This will do.”

“How much is already completed?”

Tony told him.

They began discussing the entire plan in low whispers: Tony leaning over the table, Loki perched on the edge leaning in to peer over Tony’s shoulder.

By the time Yinsen woke a few hours later, they were arguing about the merits of different metal alloys and the practicality of certain aspects of the repulsor-based propulsion system Tony wanted to use in the suit.

“I take it we’re all on good terms, then?” he asked.

“Yes,” Loki said. “Thank you for the care shown in checking my injuries, Dr. Yinsen.”

The doctor nodded slightly. “I take it the plans...”

Tony gestured him over with a hand. “I’ll explain. Come over here and help me with this.”

Yinsen did so, keenly aware of their new guest keeping an eye on them rather closely as Tony explained the new plans and Yinsen concurred with most of them, correcting only a little, here and there.

 

~~

 

Tony’s shift to sleep came next. Loki continued to work, and once Yinsen completed most of the tasks he was capable of without the engineer’s guidance, he wandered over to watch Loki at work.

“Why do you lie to him?” Loki asked quietly.

Yinsen froze. “What?”

“You lie, when you agree with various steps in the plans. I’m most curious as to your true intentions, Dr. Yinsen.”

The medico swallowed thickly. “I honestly do not expect to survive.”

Loki turned to shoot him a glance. “You do not entirely wish to.”

Yinsen said nothing.

Loki returned to his work on the back-piece of Tony’s armor. “He looks to you as a mentor, you know. I recall how he regarded his father. He thinks of you with more respect. Perhaps because you wish to return to your family, I hear.”

The doctor sighed. “How did you know I lied?”

“I was watching. And it’s something of a specialty of mine.”

The doctor looked at the tall, thin man bend over the work table, with heated metal and flame casting strange shadows around him. “My family is dead,” he said softly.

Loki stopped, set down tool and armor both, and turned around fully to face Yinsen, examining his face closely. “I see.”

“Do you have family, Mr. Odinsson?”

The god of mischief’s lips twitched first with discomfort, then just a hint of a sad smile. “A daughter, yes.” His expression sobered. “And if someone harmed her, someone I was powerless to harm on my own, I might encourage an inventor to turn himself into a weapon to set them all ablaze, too, given the chance.”

Yinsen’s brow furrowed even as he grimaced. “You’re a terribly blunt man.”

“Not often,” Loki said, then gently inquired, “I understand your manipulation of Stark, but I don’t see why you wish to die.”

“I have no life to return to, outside this cell,” Yinsen said.

Loki considered. “I would like you to meet my daughter.”

The doctor hesitated. “Why?”

“She might be of aid to you. And it would be far better than letting yourself get shot like an animal and breaking the heart of the man who’s getting in a bit of vengeance for you,” Loki whispered. “Her name is Hela.”

Yinsen’s brow furrowed. “Hela.”

Loki smiled a little. “I had thought you looked half-viking. Your mother was Norwegian?”

“Finnish,” Yinsen corrected. “My parents were polar opposites, really.”

Loki nodded. “She told you some of the old stories.”

“You... wish me to believe you’re a god?”

“I think you know the Ten Rings possess powers that even an inventor like Stark hasn’t yet come up with ways to make. Do you know why they’re called the ten rings?”

Yinsen nodded. “It’s just a story-”

“ _I’m_ just a story,” Loki said softly. He raised a bare hand, summoned just a bit of green flame, persuading it to slither around his hand, growing longer, until it curled down his arm, the head resting on his fingers and hissing. It was an illusion. Given that simply bending light was the easiest of tricks, it should’ve been effortless; instead, it taxed him enough to make his bones ache, even though he could still taste palladium on his tongue, from the hits of power he’d drawn from the arc reactor. He snapped his hand shut and the serpent vanished. “I’m also very tired, from fighting a ring-wielder and the dragon who associates with their lot, or I would be long gone from here by now.”

For a long moment, Yinsen stared. “About the horse...”

Loki sighed, with a hint of a terse smirk. “The only decent slander my otherwise upstanding brother and Lady Sif ever came up with. I can’t help but credit them on its sheer staying power. No: I never gave birth to a horse.”

Yinsen shook his head, almost-smiling. “Your daughter...”

“Yes. She might take you to them, if you so wish. At the very least, she can let you see them again.”

The doctor nodded, and wiped at one of his eyes. “I... I thank you. How can I-”

“Don’t get killed. That will be payment enough,” Loki said softly.

“This is the strangest bargain I’ve ever heard of.”

“Well, then clearly you’ve not heard _all_ of the old stories about me.”

 

~~

 

Within two days, without any further illusions, healing, or other taxing of his reserves, Loki still had not recovered overmuch of his power. However...

“I’m still more than formidable, Stark,” he assured. “Trust me.”

So when Stark activated his suit and made his charge out the doors, taking out their captors with impressive efficiency, Loki caused the temperature in the room to drop substantially, and led Yinsen up through the catacomb-like sections of cavern in Stark’s wake. He was aware of the man staring, and tried his best to ignore it.

“Why are you blue?”

Loki sighed. “Frost jotunn. Apparently I was adopted. Can we not discuss this now?” He summoned a foot-thick wall of solid ice in time to block a few pistol-shots from down the hall. “Next check-point!”

Yinsen darted ahead obediently, and Loki followed, cutting down the occasional still-lively member of the Ten Rings with a massive blade of ice freshly formed around his arm, resembling an oversized scimitar.

“And that’s not magic?” Yinsen couldn’t help but ask.

“It’s more of a natural defense mechanism,” Loki muttered.

“Why didn’t you escape like this in the first place?” Yinsen asked.

Loki didn’t answer. He just looked around the corner, made sure it was clear, and snapped, “Next checkpoint.” For good measure, he also grabbed Yinsen’s arm and dragged him along.

 

~~

 

In the end, the three of them stood in the middle of what had once been a small trade town somewhere in a generally Slavic region of Easter Europe, before the arrival of the Ten Rings, who had sought to take advantage of the cave system under the town’s single cathedral. There might have been other villagers around after that, but Loki theorized that the rest of them had fled after the incident with the dragon, which had knocked down half of the aforementioned cathedral and a few other buildings scattered about town, and set fire to the eastern half of it.

Now all that was really left of the local Ten Rings operation was an eerily empty township, heavily damaged. Also, the remains of the cathedral, and a few surrounding buildings, had caught fire at some point. Moonlight and firelight shone along the aggressive bronze-and-steel lines of Tony’s suit. “No emergency exit by air needed, then.” He sounded a little disappointed.

“I’m sure you’ll find time to test out your flight capabilities later,” Loki said.

“Why are you blue?” Tony asked.

Loki sighed. “Long story.”

“He’s a frost jotunn,” Yinsen offered.

Loki glared at him.

Yinsen looked a little perturbed. “Sorry.”

Tony raised the face-mask of his suit. “So that’s a delicate subject. Noted. Now... where do we go from here?”

“I suppose I can put out the fires while you both get settled in that inn on the less conflagration-covered part of the street.” He pointed.

“You’ll be doing what now?” Tony asked. “I thought you still didn’t have much-”

Loki touched his chest-plate with a smile.

“Aaaugh! Cold! COLD!” Tony shouted, and stepped back less than gracefully.

“That part isn’t actually magic. I’ll join you within an hour or so, gentlemen,” Loki assured, adjusting his still-bloodstained waistcoat and sauntered off toward the heard of the blaze.

Yinsen shook his head. “I cannot believe that creature.”

“Me neither. What’s a jotunn?”

“Come to the inn, I’ll tell you a couple of the old stories.” For the sake of self preservation, Yinsen reluctantly left out the one about the horse.

Neither of them thought much about what a vengeful god might do to any remaining survivors of the Ten Rings, however, for which Loki was grateful. He knew neither of them would have approved of his rather ruthless handling of them, but it made him feel _so_ much better afterwards.

 

~~

 

Loki arrived at the inn looking gaunt and exhausted, and found his companions had begun raiding the inn’s wine cellar, which had been left mostly-intact after the inn’s owners and guests had made their hasty flight from the town.

Loki settled in at their table and picked up one of the bottles they had not yet opened. Failing to decipher the label, he opened it anyway, and had drained a third of it before either mortal at the table to could say a word. He then set it back on the table and leaned on his folded arms. “So. Travel plans.”

“No horses,” Yinsen said. “We checked.”

“Empty carts but no horses,” Tony confirmed. “I believe they broke out of the stalls once they smelled smoke from the town being on fire.”

“That will make transporting his suit very troublesome,” Yinsen added.

“Unless you have enough in you for a trip back to London,” Tony suggested.

Loki considered. “I’ve not yet been to England, admittedly.”

“London smells awful,” Yinsen muttered.

“I live far enough out,” Tony assured. “And how have you not been to England? You almost _sound_ English half the time.”

Loki raised an eyebrow. “I do?”

Both mortals exchanged glances. “Yes,” they said.

“In any case,” Loki began. “I would need some sustenance and to sleep for roughly eighteen hours before considering a thing like that. Is there enough food here for the pair of you for a few days?”

“Almost a week, really,” Yinsen said. “The Ten Rings were making use of this place a lot.”

“Excellent,” Loki said. “Then there might be enough for me to have a decent meal tonight.” He stood and wandered into the kitchen, taking his claimed bottle of wine with him. The mortals waited.

An hour or so later, Loki re-emerged with two large platters of salted, cured meats, cooked enough to satisfy a viking, and set them on the table.

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Hungry?”

“Like you wouldn’t _believe_ ,” Loki concurred, and began to tuck in.

 

~~

 

As Loki slept on a cot behind the bar like a dead thing for most of the next day, Tony ran checks on his suit, making little alterations here and there even as his thoughts centered on where he would have to put the thing while he worked on a considerably sleeker model with fewer exposed gears and more range-of-motion at all of the joints.

Yinsen eventually persuaded him to take full advantage of his time to rest by bathing thoroughly, washing the clothes he’d been kidnapped in so that he might appear almost-presentable once they had dried, and shaving his beard back into its more usual, distinctive style. His hair was beyond help without the aid of a professional barber, but Tony didn’t mind that half so much.

They day passed slowly, and at some point Tony settled in at the bar with a glass of some odd local liquor and watched the god of mischief sleep. Loki had insisted on being downstairs rather than any of the rooms, in case they proved to be less alone in town than they first guessed. Insofar as quick-response and near-indestructibility, Loki was a fine guard dog. How he expected them to wake him, given how deeply he seemed to sleep, Tony wasn’t sure.

Loki looked terribly young, when asleep. His apparent age was all in his mannerisms, his gestures, his expressions and his words. Also those eyes of his. Eyes shut, muscles relaxed, he was ageless as a classical statue. Tony wasn’t sure how long he had been staring by the time Yinsen, behind him, cleared his throat pointedly to interrupt the engineer’s thoughts.

Tony spun around to face him with a carefree smile.

Yinsen raised an eyebrow at him. “I know you have a reputation as a hedonist, Mr. Stark...”

“I do,” Tony said softly, with just an edge of defiance. “With good reason.”

The doctor considered. “You are not religious, then?”

The engineer managed not to snort, but only just. “No. I am not. I was never raised with it. It’s something I’m actually rather grateful to my father for.”

Yinsen considered, then smiled vaguely. “I lost my faith some years ago. I suppose being spared that would be something of a blessing.”

“Or a lucky break,” Tony said.

“Do you...” He glanced toward Loki. “I myself do not consider it the aberration that the church does, but-”

“I do. Now an then.” Tony glanced at the god of mischief, still comatose. “And I admit he interests me. That said: I know what I’m doing.”

“No you don’t.”

“Most likely not, but I’m confident regardless.”

“Just keep in mind, religious or no... there’s a reason stories like that about gods and mortals end in tragedy so often.”

Tony’s brow furrowed. “I’m not––I don’t think it’s _that_ -”

“Tony,” the doctor interrupted. “He fought his way out, and protected me all the while. He might have fought his way out long ago and left us behind. I would have expected that of him, given _his_ reputation. He does not help people without something being owed or promised to him in return: not in _any_ of the old stories I have heard. He is not a benevolent god. He’s a selfish one. Consider that, and all he has done for you.”

“For us-”

“For _you_ ,” Yinsen said. “He made a deal with me. He made promises to you, and kept them. Did you promise any such things to him?”

Tony hesitated. “What do you owe him?”

Yinsen’s lips thinned. “I have paid it. In return, I am to meet with his daughter.”

At that, Tony did a bit of a mental double-take. “Wait, what?”

“Hela. She rules the land of the dead.” Yinsen crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. “My family is all dead, Tony. The Ten Rings killed them, but kept me for my usefulness.”

Tony felt as though he’d been punched, suddenly. “What? But you-” It clicked. He covered his mouth with one hand. “Before... before Loki showed up, when you said you would see your family again-”

“I planned to make sure they were distracted, and that you had time to get out.”

Tony’s eyes squeezed shut and he folded his arms tight across his chest. “You’re an idiot,” he said softly.

“I am a man who has lost all that mattered in his life, Tony Stark. Everything I lived for is gone. My village, my home, my wife, and my daughters.” He shot the younger man a very cold look. “Do not presume to understand that loss.”

The engineer hesitated, then looked away, eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “You promised him...”

“That I wouldn’t get killed. He seemed to think it would affect you poorly.”

Tony’s eyes snapped open, full of confusion. “I hardly knew him, then. I still hardly know him. He’d only met me twice and-” He stopped taking a deep breath. “Well. That’s. I’m not sure what to think of this.”

“He likes you.” Yinsen shrugged. “You have to consider what you want.”

Tony considered the past two days, and his initial brief meeting with the god in question. He finished his drink. “Thank you. I’ll think on it,” he said, and set his glass on the bar, wandering outside into the golden hour before what might be rightfully called sunset.

He took in the sight of burnt buildings, debris, and the eerie silence of the recently-abandoned town. People would come back, when less afraid. This he knew. They hadn’t yet, though. He did a bit of walking, relishing in the ability to move about freely after nearly a month below-ground.

He considered the almost-constant banter he and the god of mischief had managed to keep up as they worked, neither of them running out of words. It had been the same for Tony, the first time he met Richard Reed and almost immediately embarked on a half-mad project with him, but even then it hadn’t been so smooth. Gallows humor, and jokes that were a bit indecent, made Reed uncomfortable, and put a hitch in their conversations at times. It was the same with many other geniuses he had met over the years: even if they could keep up with him in brilliance, there were personal little quirks and personality flaws on Tony’s side or theirs, which made for the occasional awkward silence or uncomfortable moments wherein one or the other was trying to pretend to not be offended by someone’s tone, or implications, or that Tony had seduced their daughter the prior evening. Tony mentally filed that last one under “little personality flaws” he may or may not possess.

He knew little about Loki, other than the general impression that his father and elder brother were a combined touchy subject, along with the Jotunn thing, which Yinsen had explained as Jotunns being (generally) the enemies of the Aesir (Thor and Odin being on that list) which _really_ made Tony wonder.

However, Tony was mostly-certain that the god of mischief considered him both easy on the eyes, and intelligent enough to consider worth getting into bed with, given the opportunity. Tony also knew that he was absolutely fine with that idea. Furthermore, the idea of having a god in his bed for more than a one-night affair wasn’t unpleasant––not at all. It made him start thinking about exploring every inch of Loki’s skin and... yes, that would be a good place to start. And perhaps revisit a few times.

That just left him the challenge of luring the god into sticking around instead of pulling a vanishing act the way he had the first time they met. Tony couldn’t help feeling that as soon as he put any hope in keeping someone, they would disappear. It had happened with people in his life he had cared about. The fact Loki was truly capable of just vanishing himself away like a candle-flame being blown out––well, it made Tony feel especially cautious and hesitant to really reach out...

And then there was what Yinsen had told him. The promise Loki had made the doctor keep wasn’t one of direct benefit to the god of mischief at all. It didn’t even really look right standing next to the title “god of mischief” in a way. It made Tony’s heart feel a bit strange, as though it weren’t sure whether it should flutter or ache or panic.

He returned to the inn before dusk fell straight on into night, and went back to working on his suit, fixing the minor damages still leftover from escape.

Loki joined him perhaps an hour later, proffering a plate of bread, cheese, and cold meats. “Yinsen mentioned you hadn’t eaten much today.”

Tony accepted it with a self-deprecating smile and a quiet thanks.

Loki pulled up a chair and watched him for a bit. He had apparently found some fresher clothes somewhere. The trousers fit him well, but the shirt and waistcoat had clearly been intended for someone with a little more bulk. It was still better than the old one with all the bloodstains.

“I take it you finished off the rest of the pantry?”

The god of mischief shrugged. “Mostly, yes. There’s enough for the pair of you in the morning, unless you would prefer to leave sooner.”

“You’re really up for it?” Tony asked carefully.

Loki nodded. “I recover quickly when capable of getting the fuel and rest necessary. That was harder to do, in those caves.”

Tony nodded. “Yinsen seemed impressed by your ability to get out of the place with him.”

“It was not easy, really. And I would hardly have managed the satisfying degree of large-scale destruction that the pair of us managed, in accordance with the plan.”

Chewing thoughtfully, Tony admitted to himself that that made sense. He swallowed. “He also mentioned making something of a deal with you.” He shot the trickster an arch look, examining his expression closely.

Loki’s clinically neutral mask was back, which Tony found interesting. “Did he?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Thank you.”

For a moment, the god of mischief looked genuinely surprised. “You’re welcome,” he said softly, looking away with an air of something that, on almost anyone else, might have been easily mistaken for shyness.

“How long have you been keeping an eye on me?” he asked absently.

Loki stiffened. “Pardon?”

“You said I was the least superstitious mortal you’d ever met,” Tonys said, “based on what you’d heard of me. You’ve been keeping an ear out, then. Or an eye, in the case of newspapers. Either that, or we’ve come close to crossing paths again before.”

“Yes, I’ve kept up with your headlines, on the occasions I’ve been in countries prone to supporting journalists who can’t get enough of you. If we’ve come close to meeting again before this most recent occasion, I was no more aware of it than you were,” Loki said. “You’re more interesting than most mortals.”

“What have you been up to over the years, anyway?”

Loki cleared his throat quietly. “A number of things.”

Tony raised an eyebrow as he took another bite of cheese.

“Well,” Loki mused. “I had only arrived on the planet about a year before we first met. It took me nearly ten months of recover from that arrival, at which point I took to getting an idea how this world had changes since I last visited. In the process, I did what I tend to do best.”

“Cause mischief?”

Loki nodded. “I found particularly clever or important people, brilliant organizations––challenging things. I needed to ground myself, and recall who I am, and why.” He glanced away. “Also, in the process, I was looking for ways in which I had changed.” He shook his head a little and continued, “In truth, my magic was very slow to recover in those first few years. Only once I started finding other magic-users around the world and causing _them_ mischief did I begin to truly recover.” He smirked. “Stealing artifacts of power from them was helpful, of course.”

“Then what?” Tony asked.

With a shrug, Loki summarized, “Looking for more power. The Ten Rings are named for ten literal rings, which are actually alien technology of a long-lost sort. The dragon I dealt with is from the race of beings who created them.”

“What do you really need power for?” Tony asked.

“To return home. Well, that was the initial excuse.” He examined his own palm and fingers for a moment. “After five years, I had recovered enough to access the paths between worlds I have always been so proud of discovering. I could go anywhere, do anything, without anyone being the wiser.” He chuckled a little, running that hand through his hair. “By that point, I wasn’t sure I wanted to return, and I had the clarity of mind to consider that I might not be welcome, given the means by which I was lost to them.” He looked Tony in the eye, calm and steady, and still a bit self-deprecating. “I have more than a little blood on my hands.”

Tony considered. “After this business-” he pointed at the suit. “-so do I.”

“That was-”

“There were plenty I didn’t have to kill,” Tony said quietly. “I did anyway. And I still slept pretty well last night. It doesn’t disturb me, which I suppose should in itself be disturbing, but I’m fine with it. It was a bad idea, sort of cruel, and a bit overzealous, but I don’t regret it much, just now. Maybe later, when I’ve had time for a bout of self-loathing to kick in, but I’m fine for now.” He looked at Loki. “You?”

Loki was looking at him with an intense, very difficult to read expression. “Yes.”

“Good.” Tony turned his stare back to his suit. “This suit is all sorts of big, ugly and unsubtle.” He smiled a little. “Would it be an interesting enough challenge for you to help me improve it, you think? Make a new model?” He didn’t have to look at the god of mischief to know the offer surprised him.

“It might be,” Loki said softly. “How difficult is finding accommodations in London, these days?”

Tony’s grin widened. “For you, it would be pretty easy. I have a very large house, and at least two spare bedrooms.” He shot the god a sidelong glance, wicked and amused. “Or you could stay in mine, of course.”

He heard Loki move, but was still surprised to feel cool breath against his ear a moment before Loki said, low and almost threatening, “You would trust a god of lies and chaos into your home, Mr. Stark?”

“So long as the god in question is named Loki and happens to be you, then yes,” Tony replied. “Any other gods of dishonesty or general mayhem would probably be laughed at for even asking.”

Loki made a small, amused sound and draped himself across Tony’s lap without any further warning, his arms settling over the engineer’s shoulders. “You do surprise me.”

A bit breathless all of a sudden, Tony nodded in agreement as his hands instinctively settled on the god of mischief’s waist, steadying them both on the chair meant for only one body to occupy. “I could say the same,” Tony concurred.

Loki’s lips hovered very close to his own, then. “I’m getting far too fond of you, I think,” he murmured, “but even if I wanted to, I doubt I could stop it.”

“So you like bad ideas too.” Tony grinned. “Good to know we have that in common.”

“I love bad ideas,” Loki purred, and captured his mouth in a slow, involved kiss, that deepened quickly and soon had them both breathing more heavily.

Tony let himself relax into it, tasting snowmelt, apples, and thyme, as he explored Loki’s mouth, and shivered upon being explored in turn. He wasn’t sure he’d ever taken part in a kiss quite so unhurried and thoughtful, but he had no complaints, and it wasn’t as though it were quite tame: hints of teeth, the slightly sharper bite of Loki’s nails at the nape of his neck pulling a low sound from him. Tony’s hands moved slowly up Loki’s sides and then back down, thumbing the hollows of his hips trough the fabric of his trousers, teasingly close to getting his hands on something a little more substantial.

When it at last broke, they made no immediate move to pull apart, but instead lingered, breathing each other in.

“Silver-tongue. I can see that,” Tony murmured.

Loki chuckled softly. “Really? But you’ve scarcely gotten the smallest sampling.”

The engineer shivered. “Oh, I _like_ you.”

Loki shifted a bit closer with a thoughtful hum.

“No really. I do,” Tony said. “The real question is whether you’ll let me really know you. Not in the purely biblical sense.”

“I proudly know nothing about the biblical sense of anything,” Loki said. “I’ve been a god on this planet longer than that religion has been around.”

Tony chuckled. “To ‘know you’ in the biblical sense would involve less clothing, and a bit of lubricant of some sort, for preference. That’s still an option, later, but all the rest: I’m curious about that too.”

Loki’s head lifted enough for him to meet Tony’s eye. “I will consider.”

“I wonder if you taste different when blue,” Tony murmured.

The god of mischief looked mildly scandalized. “Pardon?”

“You look lovely in blue.”

Loki blinked, clearly trying and failing to find dishonesty there.

“I’m not joking. It would obviously bother you a lot if I were quite rude enough to do that. I’m just curious.”

“Don’t you have a colloquialism concerning curiosity and its effects?”

“I’m not a cat.” He settled his arms around Loki’s waist. “Will you show me?”

Loki glanced up and around the room quickly.

“I may have told Yinsen to go ahead and sleep, and to probably not come downstairs for a few hours lest he see something disturbing,” Tony assured. “I have something of a reputation, if you hadn’t heard...”

“I have,” Loki said, smirking. “I’m a Norse god. You think I _don’t_ have one on par with yours in that regard, if not worse?”

“Well...”

“If you’re seeking to imply what I think you may be seeking to imply,” Loki added, “I’d also like to mention that I will not be inclined to share you, while we pursue this.”

Tony’s eyes widened a little. It’d been a long while since he’d had a lover interested enough to be possessive, and interesting enough that Tony liked it. “I’m fine with that.”

“Good.” Loki narrowed his eyes a little, and slowly his coloration bled over to blue, his eyes going blood red.

Tony shivered a bit at the temperature change. “The cold comes with that, then?”

“Apparently. I was not altogether aware I could take this form until shortly before my return to earth,” Loki said simply. “I’ve not explored all of the details, as it were.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I resent it, yes.”

Tony ran his fingertips over the slightly raised markings on Loki’s cheekbones, jaw, and neck. “That’s a pity, really, because you’re gorgeous like this, too. Blue, yes, but it looks good.”

Loki’s eyes were half-lidded and he seemed distinctly distracted. “Hmm.”

“Are you all right?”

The god of mischief nodded slightly. “Don’t stop.”

Tony smirked a little. Touching Loki’s skin was like touching ice, but dry and Loki-shaped. As his fingers trailed down the back of Loki’s neck, he raised his eyebrows as the god of mischief all but shuddered. “Good.”

“Your hand is very, very warm,” Loki said softly. “It is... an interesting contrast.”

“Well, then. Let me try this.” He leaned up, and kissed Loki again, tasting the way Loki gasped a bit at the contact and using it to his advantage, slipping his tongue between those now-chilled lips and getting another taste. He shivered when one of Loki’s hands settled on his neck, urging him to tilt his head back a little further, deepening the kiss and making them both moan softly. Tony wasn’t sure quite what he liked better, the shudder-inducing temperature contrast, or when he first noticed Loki was warming back up as he seemed to lose his restraint a bit further. Before the thaw quite finished, though, the god of mischief managed to pull his shirt untucked and slide his hands under it. _Cold getting warmer still cold oh fuck_ , Tony thought, arching up against Loki with a small gasp.

“Good?” Loki purred.

“Yes,” Tony managed, shivering, his eyes falling open in time to see the blue start to fade, though the chill lingered a bit longer. “Have I mentioned that you happen to be quite frankly beautiful?”

“You hadn’t, no.”

“I should’ve. And should repeat it frequently.”

“Did you find out the answer to your initial question?”

Tony’s tongue darted out along his lower lip, and he looked thoughtful. “Juniper. You taste less like thyme, more like juniper. Otherwise the same.”

Loki smiled a little, small and oddly sincere and just slightly puzzled. “I like you.”

“Good,” Tony murmured, pushing Loki’s unbuttoned waistcoat off his shoulders to the floor and unbuttoning the shirt-cuffs at Loki’s wrists with the dexterity of one with a good deal of experience unbuttoning other people’s clothing one-handed. He then pulled the slightly oversized shirt up over Loki’s head, biting his lip as the god of mischief laughed softly and let him. They had only candle-light, then, as the sun at last set outside and the gas lantern Tony had been using inconveniently went out. At least, until Loki divested Tony of his shirt and added the light from the arc reactor between them. Tony’s breath stuttered when Loki lowered his head to kiss the top of it, where skin met metal. “It doesn’t bother you?”

“It hums with raw power, it’s keeping you alive, and it’s a reminder that you’re brilliant and fascinating and unique,” Loki murmured. “I rather like it.” Then he straightened up pressed closer again, almost enough to smother the light.

And Tony met him, warmed the last of the chill from them both, his hands moving over pale skin as they kissed again, more impatiently this time. It lasted them longer, breaking only infrequently as the rest of their clothing fell to the floor, and they set about very nearly breaking Tony’s chair.

 


End file.
